I am joining to maybe learn a few things and maybe even share some things I learned. I've used Linux for many years off and on, now and then. And for a number of years I have been the administrator for an Ubuntu based CGI server for a web hosting company. I put the server together, wrote the scripts in Perl, etc. Just recently I created an SVN server for work.

I have had a really bad experience with M1cr0s0f7 (sorry about the misspelling style) and especially with Windows 8. I got a new laptop (HP Pavilion g7) this past summer which was pre-installed with Windows 7 (used Windows Vista and XP for years before that). I been wanting to move to Linux for a few years but much hardware I used and software wasn't available. Until I found out about Linux Mint. Virtually all my hardware (built-ins on the laptop and some off-brand things like a graphics tablet and MIDI keyboard) work! And I've found that software has really developed and great stuff is out there. I've got to the point where I took the plunge and reformatted the drive and installed Mint this past weekend. So far I'm really enjoying it! I've always loved KDE so that's what I am using. (14 Nadia).

So here goes my adventure into living and working fully in Linux. It'll be nice to develop stuff for work without having to fire up a virtual machine and upload code then test it, etc. I do have a couple test VMs though for testing stuff for the work servers if needed. Nice to see there's VirtualBox in Linux too!

I have to get to bed as it's very late again (I never learn to get to bed early) and tomorrow I have to go through my notes and organize them all. Then hopefully I can start sharing some of this info. I'll probably have a ton of questions too as I go along.

Thank you everyone for the welcome! I got up very late (as expected) and got to work with stuff online. I found out that PayChex won't work with Chromium (I get an "RSL Error 1 of 6" and another error code number I forgot) even though I whitelisted Flash for that site, closed the browser, reopened it and logged back in. I was lucky it worked in Firefox. My solution was to make a desktop icon to open that site in Firefox. One of these days I'll find out why it's throwing those errors. I really wish PayChex would not use a flash-based site.

Today I'll be gathering my notes together and hopefully will have some useful posts to make in the future.

Welcome! As someone who consults small biz and non-profits onthe virtues of open source (and KDE), I'll be interested in hearing about your challenges and victories while working full-time with Linux. We need more people like you

They'll all look at me and say,Hey look at him! I'll never live that way.But that's okay - They're just afraid to change.- Shannon Hoon